


Changer

by Squornshellous_Beta



Category: Worm - Wildbow
Genre: Gen, Self-Insert, Unbalanced powers, power munchkinry for fun and profit, the usual CYOA fare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-19 14:30:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3613437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squornshellous_Beta/pseuds/Squornshellous_Beta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My submission to the overpowered self-insert fad, using the alternate mechanics described by <a href="http://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/16796117/">Sun Tzu</a>.</p><p>(Previously <i>Unnamed Alternative CYOA Self-Insert Story Opening, a Standalone</i>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Well. This was… unexpected.

Certainly, the Worm Self-Insert fad wasn’t unknown to me. Indeed, I had been discussing a variant on the concept not even two days earlier. But there’s quite a difference between sitting comfortably reading fanfiction and waking up in a rather run-down city that could only – well, no, it could be places other than Brockton Bay, and perhaps that shouldn’t have been my first theory, but... it certainly seemed to fit.

As though it needed to get worse, the graffiti littering the area marked it as Empire territory. It would probably, I considered, be a good idea to get an idea of my powers and leave before any Nazis came across the black girl in their streets. As it was, I was thankful I had been dropped here in the early morning, when nobody seemed to be around.

Perhaps the other way around would have been a better choice, but given that I had no idea which way to go without simply ending up deeper in the danger zone (wasn’t that a song or something? No, never mind) figuring out my powers was probably my best bet for getting to safety.

Assuming I wasn’t a Tinker, at least, because minor secondary powers or not that wouldn’t be much help without supplies.

So. Powers. Wandering idly into a nearby alleyway – checking first that nobody was there yet, I wasn’t _stupid_ – I looked at one of my hands in hope of finding a clue of some sort. Nothing. (Well, not strictly true – I was reasonably sure I hadn’t taken Case 53 or Reincarnation, because my hand was recognizably human and just-as-recognizably scarred – but no hint as to my new power, in any case.) How did that ridiculous rhyme go… _Mover, Shaker, Brute and Breaker…_

I didn’t feel particularly fast, tough, or fortunate, no ideas for machines sprung to mind, and posing dramatically failed to make lasers shoot out of my eyes. Indeed, none of the powers clicked until I got to the last verse and, with barely a thought, smoothed out the scars and damage accumulated over twenty-two years. _Changer_ , I thought, and a smile slightly wider than was strictly possible spread across my face. _Oh, yes. I can work with this._

* * *

Taylor Hebert was having a very bad day.

Not, admittedly, that there are good days when your very first cape fight has been reduced to single combat with Lung.

Almost no living bugs remained within her range, none of them in any way fireproof. He had super-senses, so there was no way to run or hide. The pepper spray that was supposed to keep people down for thirty minutes would last mere seconds more against his regeneration. All told, she was rather soundly out of options.

 _How_ , she mused in what she fully expected to be her final moments, _is this monster not an A-lister?_

Lung suddenly moved, flames wreathing his hands, and Taylor screwed her eyes shut.

When she heard the crackling whoosh of the flame and wasn’t burned alive, she opened her eyes again. Lung was firing a stream of flame at a building some distance away. She looked to see what he was aiming at, but couldn’t make anything out in the gloom or the brief second of light Lung’s flames afforded.

With no warning, a solid black figure dropped out of the sky at a steep angle and landed atop Lung with an impact Taylor swore people would have heard halfway down the street. Knocked off-balance by the collision, the roof subsiding beneath him, Lung was hurled off the roof and back into the street, the new arrival going with him.

Since the immediate danger seemed somewhat lessened, and Taylor was still reeling from the shock of not being dead, she felt justified in taking a few moments to collect herself. Once she was reasonably certain she could stand without collapsing, she peeked over the edge of what remained of the roof, ready to pull back in a moment if it seemed likely that there would be fire coming her way.

Given his performance so far, the scene she witnessed seemed the very height of absurdity. Though the pitch-dark newcomer was bathed in flames it – she – seemed quite unharmed, and the ground beneath her feet, which in its own course would have melted long ago, seemed to have been transformed to some kind of metal, out to a range of perhaps twenty feet; the edges, where it transitioned to normal road, looked curiously organic, calling to mind tree roots or perhaps veins. That wasn’t the absurd part. The absurd part was that though Lung was furiously savaging the newcomer with fully and more the super-strength that had launched him earlier, she barely seemed to notice; it was like a normal person striking a stone statue. A stone statue that hit back, and each strike produced a deep, solid _thump_ and actively dented Lung’s scales.

Even now, though, he was growing larger and stronger, his regeneration smoothing out the dents. Even if he couldn’t beat his opponent he would likely soon scale to the point where she couldn’t take him down either, and if he pulled away from the fight for long enough to focus on Taylor it would end poorly. Seemingly realizing the very same, the newcomer tilted her head as though in thought, then changed strategies; her hand _shifted_ as she went in for the next blow, an obsidian blade piercing through the divide between two armored plates and embedding itself in his body.

Lung bellowed in pain, loud enough now that Taylor instinctively clapped her hands to her ears, and tried to pull back, but the figure moved with him, refusing to withdraw her arm. He moved as though to grab her, but faltered partway through the motion; he swayed in place briefly, and as he began to collapse she withdrew her arm and darted away at a speed that felt bizarrely at odds with the force her punches had demonstrated, for all that Lung had made clear that strength and speed were not mutually exclusive. He collapsed, and Taylor briefly wondered if he was unconscious or dead before he began to collapse in on himself, shrinking down to his base form far more quickly than he had grown.

Taylor was _pretty_ sure he wouldn’t have changed back if he was dead, at least. Seventy percent sure. Ish.

The figure knelt down, placing her hand on the metal in the street, and it retracted back in on itself, the roots seeming almost to grow in reverse and giving way to normal asphalt. She looked around, as though making sure she hadn’t forgotten anything, then turned to face the rooftop where Taylor still perched. “Hey, kid!” she called, revealing an unfamiliar, ambiguous accent. “Good work with him,” (she gestured in the direction of the unconscious Lung) “want to come down? Pretty sure there’s Protectorate incoming; they might want to talk.”

Unknowing of the motion multiple nearby figures were spurred into by those words, Taylor hesitated briefly, and the figure started in realization. “Right, a way down. Knew I forgot something. Gimme a sec.” She gestured, and a platform sprang up from the street in front of Taylor. “Stand on that, I’ll bring you down gently.” Taylor obeyed, and once on the ground hesitantly approached the figure, who extended a hand. She leaned away, wary, and decided to stick to her policy of not saying anything that could get her into a worse situation.

The figure withdrew her hand, and there was a brief pause. Taylor used the time to actually register more than simply “obsidian statue”. The new cape was just shy of inhumanly tall, female-shaped, and seemingly bore no clothes, presumably simply because there was nothing to hide; her form was that of a silhouette, or perhaps a Barbie doll. Her hair, one of the few recognizable features, was shoulder-length and straight, formed of thin strands of the same material as the rest of her; as the light reflected off her there was a peculiar iridescence. The face lacked a visible mouth, though there was a nose, and her eyes were the only break in the solid coloration; the sclera were bright green, a single deeper green circle forming the iris and with no visible pupil. There was something just slightly unsettling about her, but Taylor couldn’t put her finger on what it was.

The figure broke the silence, revealing that her jaw didn’t move when she spoke. “Hi there, it’s good to meet you. Got a name?”

Taylor stared at her. Her voice caught in her throat before she was able to get the words out. “I don’t… I haven’t picked one yet.”

The figure nodded. “Names can be hard. I sort of gave up, went with Obsidian, because, well…” she gestured at herself. “It’s not exactly my power, but at least it doesn’t sound particularly stupid or evil. I didn’t see much of what you do – came in a bit late for that, you know – but from your costume I’m getting a bug theme? Speaking of: I _love_ your costume. Professional, or power-made, or..?”

“Uh – I made it, yeah. I control bugs; I had some spiders work together to weave the fabric, and made the armor out of the hardest shells I could get hold of. I didn’t realize it was quite so edgy until I was more than halfway done, and then it was too late to do more than roll with it.”

“It… kind of is, yeah, but I think you could probably make it work, especially if you changed up the color just a bit. Nothing huge, I can tell you’re going for stealth, but maybe a hint of gold on the edges? Something like that? It’s surprising how little it takes. Edgy heroes aren’t entirely unheard of - heck, look at Alexandria’s costume; not to say she doesn’t pull it off, but tell me you couldn’t see a supervillain wearing that black-and-grey suit-and-cape combo?”

Considering it, Taylor simply nodded.

“Yeah. Admittedly, with that power and costume you probably won’t be one of those heroes like Glory Girl who seem to spend all their time in the spotlight, but somehow I don’t get the feeling that lifestyle would agree with you very well anyway, right?”

“…Yeah, it doesn’t sound much fun. I’d rather spend my time helping people than looking good, you know?”

“I know the feeling.” Obsidian gave a sudden start, nearly sending Taylor into a panic at the possibility that Lung might have woken up or some other threat had arisen, but defused it with her next words: “I almost forgot, did Lung hurt you? I’m sorry, I should have realized earlier – invincibility, you know, sometimes it’s hard to remember people can get hurt – if you’re hurt I can help.”

Taylor visibly paused to consider it, and sounded surprised as she said, “I don’t think so.”

“Would you like me to give you a bit of a tune-up anyway? I can fix up all sorts of stuff – heal bruises and scrapes, nip any bugs – uh – illnesses in the bud, fill cavities and kill plaque, undo vision problems – even tweak things just a little so that future exercise has more of an effect, make it easier to burn off excess fat and build up muscle tone. Any or all of the above. Oh, your costume – I can do it just by touch but you’d have to let me actually, uh, touch your skin, which would mean giving me a general category of people you could be – not that I would look for who you were, I mean, that would be out of line. I could show you my own skin in return but with my powers it’s kind of unverifiable, so you’d have to trust I was showing you the real one – I would be, mind. Or I could do it through the costume but that would mean a needle, _I_ don’t even like needles. So, uh… yea or nay?”

It was at this point that Taylor realized just what was so unsettling about Obsidian at rest, prompted by the fact that in that entire speech she hadn’t once paused to breathe: she didn’t breathe. Or, in fact, move much at all, except consciously; it was a large part of why she gave off the impression of a statue, for all that her gestures were energetic.

Realization aside, Taylor considered the offer for a few moments, then pulled up her sleeve so that just a sliver of skin was exposed. “Um, maybe hold off the eyes, if you could; I’m not sure how I would explain suddenly not needing glasses to my dad.”

Obsidian lightly laid one finger on her skin, waited a moment, then pulled it away. “It takes a few seconds unless I really force it, and I don’t like doing that.” While they waited, she held up the same hand, which seemed to ripple slightly and changed to display normal, light brown skin, changing back just as Taylor began to feel the effects. It was surprising just how good it felt – she had become used to constantly being sore and bruised from school – but that just led into thoughts of how short-lived it would be. Another awkward silence began to stretch out before Obsidian tilted her head as though listening. “Protectorate incoming. Not Armsmaster, luckily.” As the figure rounded the corner, she waved and called out, “ahoy, Militia!”

The heroine said something into an earpiece as she approached, then spoke up. “Good evening. We received reports indicating Lung was in a fight, pickup is on the way but I was the closest – I’m sorry I took so long. Is he, ah...?”

“He’s alive, but sedated. –” she made a hesitant sound, and turned to Taylor, “Is it okay if I call you Bug for now? I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have to become your official name, but it’d be kind of awkward not to have anything to refer to you by.” Taylor nodded, and Obsidian turned back to Miss Militia. “She hasn’t settled on a name yet, most of the options sound evil, you can see how this could be a problem. I’m Obsidian, by the way. I only arrived partway through the fight, he was already pretty ramped up, though pretty beat up for all that; we traded punches a bit, and once I got a good chance I injected him with a cocktail to make him sleepy, relaxed, and happy. I figured however exactly his scaling works that combination would probably switch it off. He had a whole lot of venom in his system, not enough to risk being lethal given how he regenerates but I was careful to not interfere with that regeneration, I wouldn’t want to risk Bug getting in trouble if it went bad. He should be out for at least another hour, maybe as much as two but I wouldn’t count on that, it’s strong stuff but it has limits. I think that’s everything important I can tell you.”

Miss Militia nodded, thinking it over, and turned to Taylor. The girl seemed to shrink slightly under the scrutiny, and Militia softened her tone as she said, “Could you tell me how you got stuck fighting him, and maybe a summary of key events in the fight up until Obsidian arrived?”

Taylor nodded, glancing over at Obsidian before she began. “I was, um, patrolling, and I heard Lung talking to his gang. I wasn’t going to attack because, uh, Lung –“ she swallowed, “but then I heard him ordering them to kill kids, I couldn’t – I couldn’t let him do that, so I scared off the others with my bugs – that’s my power, I control bugs – and had everything I could attack Lung, trying to take him down before he scaled up too much. He burned off most of my bugs, but I managed to sting his eyes, blinded him, and tried to leave without him noticing, but I think he has super-senses when he transforms, he heard me and jumped up onto the roof where I was, I got him with the pepper spray and that bought me a few seconds but I’m pretty sure I was out of options at that point, and that was when she” (she waved a hand at Obsidian vaguely) “uh, dropped in.”

“That you managed to do that well against Lung despite him having such an effective defense against your power is very impressive. And you mentioned super senses… yes, that fits with what we’ve noticed; to have it confirmed is quite helpful, thank you. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about your power? You too, Obsidian? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but we do prefer to have complete information where we can, you understand.”

“Yeah,” said Taylor, and Obsidian simply nodded.

“Okay, ah, Bug: you said bug control, right? Master, then… how many can you control, and how precisely?”

“All of them, out to a block or so. There’s not very many in my range now, most of them died to Lung, but I haven’t noticed an upper limit. And I control them completely, or at least as close as their own biology allows.”

“ _All_ of them? With how many insects there are in a given block… That’s a fairly decent Master rating, four or five at the very least, and maybe a minor Thinker subrating for the multi-tasking involved… Just to check, you know to keep to non-lethal levels on people who don’t have Lung’s resilience, right?”

“Yeah. I had every bug I had inject all their venom at once; for most people I’d keep the widows and recluses from using any venom at all and only use a little bit at a time from wasps and things.”

“Good. Be very careful about that; if you were to kill someone even by mistake we’d have to arrest you, obviously, and not only would it be a shame to see that happen but I for one wouldn’t want to be the one sent to do it.” It was difficult to tell beneath the bandana that covered her face, but her voice implied Miss Militia was smiling. “Okay, that sounds good. Obsidian, what can you tell me about your power? I’m guessing some combination of Brute and Breaker? Unless you don’t have another form – we can offer help to Case 53s and otherwise physically altered capes, if you need it.”

“Changer,” she said. “Rating, pretty much, _yes_. I can change any part of my form as I like, without biomass limits so far as I’ve noticed. Minor thinker or possibly tinker subrating because I instinctively know how to change the things I want without anything going wrong and lobotomizing me.”

“Impressive. Do you mind if I ask about your current form?”

“And if you can only change yourself, how did you heal me and do those things with the road?” Taylor added, causing Miss Militia to raise an eyebrow questioningly.

“My current form is a self-designed construct formed of unusual biomaterials fairly similar to the Ward known as Weld. It’s nearly invulnerable, especially when I ramp up the density, though that requires constant maintenance from my power to remain workable, so I lighten up outside of combat. I can also fly; again, complex materials carefully arranged. I doubt the full explanation would be of much interest to you. Oh – hey, Bug, do you mind if I experiment a little with how our powers interact once Miss Militia’s got all the information she needs? I think you might be able to help out with a limitation I have.” Taylor shrugged, and Miss Militia looked interested but refrained from commenting. “As to the healing, I changed a little of my tissue into an agent that could heal you; it was already through your skin by the time it stopped being a part of me as defined by my power. That’s how I got Lung, too; stabbed into him and injected the sleepy juice. As to the street, I sort of ate through the asphalt and replaced it with more biometal to avoid sinking through the tarmac, what with the melting and the density; I just turned the metal into asphalt to fix it, and not being any kind of alive cut it off from me. Basically the same thing with the ride down.” Taylor nodded.

“A very impressive power. _Two_ very impressive powers. Have you considered joining the Protectorate? We always welcome more heroes, especially ones of such obvious utility, though that isn’t to say we’d only be interested in you for your powers, of course. And we can help our members in a variety of ways, from the power-based to the more mundane.”

Obsidian, seemingly declining to go first, looked at Taylor. She took a few moments to get her thoughts in order, then began, “I, um, had planned to go out at least a few times before I joined the Wards, putting off the whole paperwork-and-bureaucracy thing for a little while. After this… I think I’ll probably want to join, at least then I’ll have backup the next time something like this happens. But not tonight, if that’s okay? Tonight I’d just like to go home and sleep. Uh, after that testing Obsidian asked about I guess? I’ll come by sometime soon, I think.”

Miss Militia nodded. “Of course, that’s more than okay; I wouldn’t try and make you come in and sit through all the paperwork and talking to new people joining would involve tonight in any case. Considering how well you’ve done with just what was available in this city, I’m honestly quite excited to see what you might come up with when given access to rarer specimens – have you ever heard of the Darwin’s Bark spider?” At Taylor’s affirmative sound, she went on, “Many parahumans have found they feel much happier when using their power in new and interesting ways, and I have to admit to finding it quite interesting to watch. I think you’ll fit into the Wards very well, miss.” She was clearly beaming beneath her bandana, and extended a hand; after a moment, Taylor shook it, visibly heartened by the praise. Once the handshake ended, Militia turned to Obsidian and asked, “And yourself?”

“I’m not decided on whether to join, to be honest. I’ll certainly give it due consideration, and either way I’ll remain on the side of the heroes, but there are a few problems, through no fault of the Protectorate itself or its members. I could beat around the bush, but that’s the long and short of the matter, I’m sorry. I don’t have a contact number to hand, but I’ll get hold of one and get it to you, you can contact me if anything big comes up that you think I could help with, perhaps? And I’ll give thought to actually joining. Is that okay?”

“It’s fine, don’t worry. I can understand entirely reluctance to join, and if you could pass on your number that would be very helpful – I think you could be a tremendous asset in dealing with several high-class threats, if you were willing of course. Here –” she pulled a pair of cards out of somewhere, handing one to each cape; they matched Miss Militia herself quite well, somehow managing to make the combination of an American flag background and a gun logo seem subtle and tasteful. “You can reach me personally at this number just about any hour of the day; if I’m on duty an automated service will tell you when I’m likely to be back, or you can leave a message, or if it’s an emergency it will put you through to someone who’s available. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you not to abuse that.”

Obsidian and Taylor nodded, Taylor pocketing the card and Obsidian seeming to absorb it. The shadowlike cape tilted her head again in what Taylor recognized as her listening to something too quiet to hear, which was confirmed when she said, “Well, that seems as good a place to stop as any, and I believe your pickup is here.” Indeed, the noise of a vehicle became faintly audible. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, and I’m sure it will be again, though you’ll forgive me if I hope we don’t have to speak _too_ often, given the whole threat thing.” She paused, considered for a moment, then extruded a small, glittering loop of the material forming her body, handing it to Miss Militia. “Here, a sample of the material most likely to be useful to Protectorate scientists. I imagine biocrystal could have some interesting applications if properly implemented – for one thing, it gets Manton Effect protection. If you break off pieces and feed them the elements it’s made of, they’ll grow. I set it up so that more than a quarter of that will grow back into the same bracelet shape, figured someone might like to wear it too.” She handed it to Miss Militia, then stepped back, clearly removing herself from the conversation.

“Thank you,” the heroine responded, and turned to Taylor. “It was good to meet you, miss, and I look forward to seeing you on the team. Have a good night.”

Taylor nodded, said “Good to meet you too, and good night,” and moved to leave, Obsidian keeping pace. As they approached the end of the street and the PRT van rounded the corner, a thought occurred to her. “You said it was lucky it wasn’t Armsmaster, even though he’s in charge. How come?”

Obsidian paused, and something in her bearing suggested a smile even if she hadn’t the face for it. “Let’s ask _her_ ,” she said, and called back, “Militia! How would you rate Armsmaster’s people skills, scale of one to ten?”

Miss Militia paused, frowned, and sighed. “Not… very well,” she called in return. “He’s good at what he does, of course, but not much of a people person. Actually, he would have been the first here normally, but an Empire kid smashed up his bike; we’re thinking it was on a dare or something equally stupid. He didn’t notice several of the cameras, so identifying the culprit should be easy, but Armsmaster is fuming.”

The implied smile was huge now. “Well, you’ll have to forgive me if I’m glad we got to talk to you instead of him. Goodnight!” She waved and turned away, and she and Taylor left the scene.

* * *

Taylor was surprised how very _not awkward_ the silence was as they walked, but as they left ABB territory she did speak up. “You, uh, mentioned power testing back there?”

They stopped, and, checking to see the location was suitably private, Obsidian nodded. “Hold on, may as well sit down for this.” She formed a simple chair attached to one hand, and broke it off, placing it on the ground; Taylor sat down, and found it to be perfectly sized and remarkably comfortable. Obsidian had less reason to sit, but formed a roughly chair-shaped growth and perched on it anyway. “See, I can control my biology fine, but I only get one body. I can’t make anything to act remotely; if I want to do something at a distance, like that lift before, I have to keep it connected to me by at least a thread, which can be inconvenient. You, on the other hand, control your bugs with absolute precision and at the speed of thought; I was hoping that if I can identify the medium you work through, I might be able to recreate the effect myself. I’m sure you can see the advantages to being able to fight while my actual brain is miles away, for instance.”

Considering the implications, Taylor nodded, eyes wide beneath her mask. “How do you want to test it?”

“My hope is that I’ll make some bugs, identical to the real thing except for being connected to my body, and you’ll do whatever it is you do to them, and I’ll see that and my thinker subpower will figure it out and we all win. It will probably look weird, and I can’t promise it won’t give you a headache or something, but I’m confident nothing too bad will happen. Sound good?”

“Yeah, seems sensible. If I _do_ get a headache you can just fix it up with your healing touch, right?”

“I can. So, uh…” Obsidian held up a hand, which rippled and, disconcertingly, disgorged several kinds of bugs, among them a fly, a bee, a millipede, and a dragonfly. They twitched and shivered entirely realistically, but none of them left her skin; though it couldn’t easily be seen, their legs were sunk just slightly into that skin.

Taylor mentally nudged each of them into action, going through the full range of motion they could easily perform without taking off. Obsidian concentrated, making minor tweaks to the parts of their brains that seemed to be responding to the commands, and occasionally the effects were visible; a bug would stop moving, or move sluggishly, or ignore the commands entirely, for example. After a few minutes, Taylor’s hands flew to her head and she gasped. “Oh, wow, that headache snuck up on me. Whatever you’re doing, it’s definitely doing _something_ to my signal.”

Obsidian nodded, and twisted the brains once more; immediately Taylor felt her headache ease. “I think I’ve figured out the mechanism. It’s… I can’t figure out how to describe it in words, but it’s deviously simple once you know the trick. Let me see if I can replicate it.”

She lifted her hand and, for Taylor’s sake, explained: “I’m cutting my hand off entirely from my nervous system, so I can’t move it that way. Then I’m going to try to set up a version of your signal, see if I can control it through that. If that works, the next step would be to cut it off entirely and see if it still counts as part of me to my power.”

Nothing happened for a few moments, but then the fingers began to twitch, and then the hand moved smoothly through its range of motion. “Oh, wow, I can _feel_ that,” said Taylor. “You might want to do something about that, unless you want me knowing everything you do.” Obsidian nodded distractedly, and after another short moment the hand signal disappeared from Taylor’s mind, yet it continued moving. “It’s gone now.”

Taylor watched, fascinated, as the hand cleanly severed itself and dropped to the ground, before picking itself up and scurrying around on its fingertips. She laughed, delighted; “it’s like Thing!”

Obsidian gave another of those curious not-smiles, and the hand shifted form, becoming something that looked like a dragonfly, though it didn’t register to Taylor’s power. It darted away, and after a few moments, Obsidian announced, “it’s well outside the range you described, but I can still feel it. I think your power must be imposing a limit on how far you can control; at a guess it’s keeping the bugs from overwhelming you, Thinker power aside.”

Taylor nodded, considering the implications, while they waited for the dragonfly-hand to return. When it did, Obsidian picked it up, then paused. “You know what, I should give you something for your help – in just a few minutes you’ve expanded my power _so much_ , I wouldn’t feel right leaving you,” she paused and not-grinned, “empty-handed.” Taylor groaned. “No, but seriously. Give me a moment to think this through…”

Shortly, and after idly regrowing her hand, Obsidian held out the dragonfly, and Taylor watched, fascinated, as its form changed; matte camouflage grey, matching her own suit, with golden eyes that shone like gemstones, and six glossy, iridescent wings, it tested its wings briefly before taking flight, alighting on Taylor’s own hand when she raised it. As it landed (and Obsidian _had_ to be doing that on purpose, she thought, the dramatic timing couldn’t just arise accidentally) its mind unfolded into her control, practically a sun compared to the dim sparks that the other bugs provided. It – she – had an array of capabilities that she didn’t begin to guess at, because one of them was mentally tagged “try this first”, and that seemed as good a place to start as any. She poked whatever it was into action, and the bug began to grow; it took mere seconds to complete whatever process it was, and Taylor gasped.

“Oh, _wow_ , this is _amazing_ – did, did she turn into _armor?_ And I can see _everything_ , and, and, and, _wings?_ It’s – oh my God, I don’t know where to _start!_ ”

Obsidian nodded, not-grinning again, and disgorged a few strange bugs Taylor idly connected to, finding them to be almost entirely made of eyes and wings; they positioned themselves about her that she could see what the bug had become, and it took her a moment to realize the figure was _her_. Atop her homemade costume was what seemed to be a full set of armor formed entirely out of bug, an array of pieces connecting into a cohesive whole; dark grey with golden lines, as Obsidian had suggested earlier, the effect was both terrifying and awesome. And that didn’t even get into the six wings now extending from her back, or the eyes embedded invisibly into most of the surfaces, or the fact that just by donning the armor she could feel her range had _tripled_.

“She’s named Khepri,” said Obsidian, “unless you want to change that. She’s programmed with a few uses of my power. The first you’ve seen, of course; she turns into an armor layer for your suit. Her shell should stand up to a bullet and she’s padded to absorb impacts. She’ll anchor herself into the silk layers when she’s armor, and it should make it easier on you making future suits; you can leave out the armor plates, let her provide them, and just weave the silk parts. She’s also protecting the back of your head, growing around your hair, because I figured it was only a matter of time until someone shot you in the one unarmored spot on your suit.

“You’ve noticed her eyes, of course; normal vision, infra-red, ultra-violet, all the way through radio and gamma though some of those will be less useful than others, and a couple odd modes I don’t really have words for, that deal with some of the more common energies parahuman powers involve. Add in the bioelectricity sensors and the lack of a blind spot and you’ll be pretty hard to sneak up on. She’ll let you fly, with two distinct motions for silent flight and a distinctive noise; you can easily switch between those on the fly, so to speak. I doubt I need to point out she extends your range, but it might be worth adding that you’ll be able to connect to her no matter how far apart you are, too.

“She’ll self-repair from any damage pretty quickly, and in the claws are stings that let you choose between paralytic, sedative, antidote to the first two, and healing. Try not to get the first two mixed up with the last two. The gloves can produce a jolt that should be as effective as a stun gun. The mandibles can open and close and have a heck of a bite – don’t put anything between them that you want to remain in one piece.

“She won’t need to eat anything but would appreciate being kept in the warm instead of the cold, though it won’t actually hurt her. And if you tell her to, she can send a signal I’ll be consciously aware of, in case you want to contact me; it should work more or less like a phone in our heads. I’m not hooked into her senses in any way otherwise, obviously, that would be a blatant violation of privacy.

“I think that’s everything I need to say about her. I basically just threw every idea that seemed like it might be helpful together into one bug. It’s the least I could do to thank you for your help, I hope you like her.”

Taylor, who during that speech had been testing out the various features (especially flight. Well, okay, she had been flying around and giggling.) nodded furiously. “ _Yeah_ I like her! She’s the best bug _ever!_ ”

Obsidian nodded. “I’m glad. Anyway, we probably should get back to our respective homes. I wouldn’t want to get in trouble for keeping you out too long, after all.”

They departed, Taylor’s feet never touching the ground, and a few streets later Obsidian had to go down a different road from her, so they said their goodbyes. As she flew through the streets, Taylor mused on how much better the night had turned out than she had been expecting on that rooftop.

* * *

While I looked around for a suitable, if likely temporary, base of operations, that having been put off earlier in favour of making sure my power could do the things I needed it to if the hastily-constructed plan to befriend Taylor was to have worked, I monitored the progress of my remote bodies. As soon as I had got a good handle on the Taylornet (nope. Never calling it that again.) I had sent out miniscule drones in all directions, which had changed to forms more suited to rapid flight once they were far enough away to avoid notice. Several of them had already been converted into securely-hidden brain backups, heavily if discreetly protected in various locations, and more would soon join their ranks; they would update as I continued thinking, and some trickery with the connection meant I was _reasonably_ sure continuity of consciousness would be maintained if my active mind was destroyed and one of them activated to pick up the slack. Once I had scattered them around the world, it would take a _very_ odd combination of powers to be able to hunt them all down and kill me without me being able to stop it.

And if they somehow _did_ manage that, that would be when another of Khepri’s subfunctions would kick in.

Oh, I hadn’t _lied_ to Taylor at any point. All of the functions I’d described were in fact available to her, and it was certainly intended at least partly as a gift. I’d just… left out a few things. Like the fact that there was a packet of knowledge encoded within, sufficiently encrypted (I hoped) that only Khepri herself could access it, which would tell her the truth about Scion, among other things, in the event of my death.

Or that if she found herself fighting Scion and I was no longer alive to help – or if I _was_ , but it became necessary – the range booster would pull off all the limiters… including _species_. I hoped that the external aid would allow her to use the full extent of her powers without losing herself to the Administrator.

At that cheerful note, I found a suitable building to rest in for the night. I didn’t need to sleep any more, but the Undersiders had gone back to their hideout and it didn’t seem like a good idea to openly defy the unwritten rules so early on, leaving me with no clear next step but to wait.

My thoughts that night were of a life and people that, in all meaningful ways, I would never see again.

It was not restful.

* * *

Lisa Wilbourn was not having a good morning.

Oh, in most people’s eyes it wouldn’t be too bad. The weather was… passable, there was nothing urgent to do, and the Boss probably wasn’t going to kill her any time soon. But from the very moment when she had left the base, her power had been telling her she was being watched.

So as she sat at a table in a coffee shop of little note, sipping some ridiculous concoction, she considered how best to react. In fact, so caught up in thought was she that she barely noticed the woman more than was required for her power to report _not hostile_ , and checking everyone in her vicinity that far was more or less reflex by now.

So it came as something of a surprise when she sat down across the table from Lisa and greeted her with a cheerful “good morning”, in what she recognized as a British accent. Newcastle, specifically.

Lisa looked the woman over suspiciously. Tall, biracial, short blonde hair and blue eyes ( _unusual combination,_ she thought), wearing what _looked_ like a well-tailored suit until you noticed the utter lack of any stitches, seams, or other marks of construction. _Power-made,_ her own power confirmed.

> _Parahuman, no costume, was watching me, sought me out directly; knows of Tattletale identity too, including the power; wants to talk._
> 
> _Wants to talk despite knowing my power, making no attempt to conceal these facts; white flag, peace offering. Trying to make the conversation easier before it begins; likely intends to propose something shocking or that I won’t easily agree to. Blackmail? No. A deal, trade, mutual rendering of services. Has or knows something I want. Wants my help._

_Interesting. What about her power? Producing a suit is an odd application._

> _Material produced as one unit, down to the buttons. Matter creation? Yes, but more general. Microexpressions and microgestures are extremely regular, intentionally affected to avoid sticking out. Breathing, likewise; does not need to breathe. Breaker? No._

As though she knew exactly Lisa’s power’s train of thought, the woman winked at her, and when the eye opened again it was different, inhuman, green on green with no pupils; and then she blinked again and it was human once more.

> _Changer. Eye was composed of material not present in a human body, had a wider range of vision than standard human. Suit was_ grown _, but is made of normal material; significant degree of control over most or all aspects of own form, complete control over own form, not limited by materials present, not limited by biomass. This is the cape who took down Lung._

Lisa had to admit, she was impressed. That was a very impressive power if used halfway intelligently. She nodded, looking at the woman to prompt her to begin.

“Hi there, Lisa, I’m Jessica. I figure you’ve probably already figured out at least my power and that I sought you out for a specific purpose, so I’ll get right to the point: would you like to save the world?”

> _Is entirely serious._

“…What.”

“Yeah, maybe a little melodramatic to open with, but when else am I going to get such a good line?”

“Get to the part where you explain yourself, if you would.”

“Fair enough. Okay, I can’t say very much about the threat, for a whole range of reasons, but I can say this: I know Coil recruited you at gunpoint, and is a pretty vile person all round. At least one of his higher-priority plans is entirely unconscionable. I’m going to kill him either way, but I don’t suppose you’d be averse to helping me out afterwards? I’ve got broad outlines of plans, but I know well that you can fill them in far better than I.”

> _Knows Coil’s power. Confident she can kill him anyway. Really intends to kill him._

“I… _yes_.” Lisa paused for a moment, composed herself, and went on, “I mean, I’d certainly think about it. Not promising anything until I know more, of course. Wait, if you know all this about me, and you’re planning to kill Coil… what about the rest of the Undersiders?”

“I have a friend on the Protectorate, I can make solid gold or plain old currency, and building something for Rachel’s dogs would be trivial. I imagine you can see how to put these things together to make the others happy. …Though if I didn’t have to talk to Rachel too much, that would be ideal.”

“Not much of a dog person, I take it?”

In response she held up her right hand, and things shifted underneath the skin. Lisa’s power suggested some rather unpleasant details before it fixed itself. “I was five.”

Lisa whistled sympathetically. “Ouch. Yeah, I’ll be able to talk to her, no problem. How are you planning to kill him?”

“I was thinking leave a time-delayed disease where he’d definitely pick it up that would only infect him and wouldn’t do anything for, say, twenty-four hours, at which point he’d drop dead. That ought to be long enough to bypass the protection his power affords him, and he doesn’t have Noelle yet, so most of his contingencies oughtn’t to be too hard to deal with given your help.”

“Sounds reasonable. Who’s Noelle?”

“Forget I said that, if you wouldn’t mind. Anyway, so after that we’d work on setting up Brian and Rachel with what they want, hopefully figure out a way to keep Regent in line, and then… well, then begins the fun. I think it would be a good idea to retire your Tattletale persona; you really need something more protective than that costume anyway. Maybe Insight? Is that taken? Eh, either way. And I’ll have to introduce you to the other cape from last night at some point, we might well end up with her working with us depending on how some things go and I think you’d get along pretty well. Sound good?”

“And people say _I_ talk too much… yeah, I’m in. You obviously know more than you’re saying, so if nothing else it should be fun to ferret out your secrets. You’ve got yourself a deal, uh..?” she held out a hand to shake and trailed off.

“Obsidian,” said she, and shook it.

“Obsidian. I’m sure this is the beginning of a _very_ interesting partnership.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the curious, the Khepri armor described is, ahem, _inspired_ by the [armor](http://crashlegacy.deviantart.com/art/Skitter-Concept-Art-443759831) worn by Taylor in A Tale of Transmigration, with the color scheme taken from [Heredity](http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2014/244/6/b/skitter_and_quarantine_by_liujuin-d7xn1ni.jpg). Hey, it's not like Taylor would realize the unoriginality.


	2. Chapter 2

Taylor was relatively cheerful as she headed to her second class the next day. With Khepri, who had proved trivially resistant to weight placed upon her in testing last night, hiding near the bottom of her backpack and providing a sphere of near-complete awareness, she had already been able to avoid several attempts to trip or shove her. She would have to be careful about it, she knew, because to keep avoiding her bullies so easily would quickly spawn rumors that she was a parahuman, but for now she was riding high.

That cheerful mood, though, would not be allowed to last. Before she could reach her lesson, something unusual entered Khepri’s range, glowing in a color-without-color that she knew at once, guided by the bug’s programmed instincts, indicated a parahuman power. Surprised as she was to find a cape at Winslow, of all places, she was all the more so when she turned her attention to just who that cape was. Turning to look at her with her own eyes, to ensure she wasn’t mistaking it somehow, her immediate conclusion was confirmed: _Sophia Hess was a parahuman_.

Freezing up completely, she barely noticed as Sophia shoved her aside. Abortive fragments of thought flashed through her mind, failing to add up to anything coherent, and all the bugs in her control began to stir unconsciously, agitated by the rage pouring from her; likely only her standing order to _stay still, act like a trinket, in case you’re discovered_ saved her from doing something tremendously foolish with Khepri, the more explicit order overriding the vaguer emotion. With her swarm augmenting her thinking, it took mere instants to narrow down her identity, not that there were too many options given her sex and skin color; and the realization sent rage anew through her, holding back from dropping a swarm upon her tormentor only with enormous effort. _Sophia Hess is Shadow Stalker. Sophia Hess is a Ward._ And didn’t that explain some things! How she’d managed so many of her pranks and why the school kept covering for her, just to _start_.

She needed – she needed to leave, to get away before she brought a plague of locusts upon the school. She needed to talk to somebody, somebody who could _do something_ , needed to figure out what to do, and what this meant of the Protectorate. Reaching into Khepri, she poked the part of her into life that called the heroine she had met last night, and received a flood of incoherent concepts when the connection opened: _greetings / curiosity / planning / wait, mistake / loud loud loud! / wait,_ and then a burst of something like static, and to her relief this time the connection resolved into actual words.

 _Hi kid! Sorry about that, that was my fault; forgot to check if my thoughts would translate into language. Anyway. Shouldn’t you be in school? Don’t tell me you’re texting in class, that’s not a fitting thing for a hero to be doing._ The last conveyed a tone of wry amusement, but only served to remind her of Sophia and how the so-called heroine had treated her.

 _Not in class,_ she replied, _between classes. I’m probably going to skip anyway, now; I need to talk to someone, has to be a cape, and probably need to hit something too._

Obsidian didn’t waste time trying to talk her out of skipping her class, for which she was grateful; she would almost certainly have broken her hand if she had to hit the heroine too. _Sure, if you like. I’m here_ – the location of a warehouse in the Docks came through the connection – _with someone, mind, so be sure to wear Khepri if you don’t want to reveal your identity to either of us._

Sending an affirmative sound through the link, Taylor spun on her heel and marched out of the school.

* * *

The warehouse, when she dropped from the sky accompanied by the soothing droning of Khepri’s wings, looked disused, but it was definitely the one Obsidian had indicated, so she went in. Inside, in a room populated by furnishings that looked to have grown like trees, she found a woman with the Changer’s own statue-like stillness, who she surmised to be her civilian identity, and a girl in a reasonably light, clearly Obsidian-generated armor, which didn’t look particularly complete though it enclosed her entire body. _Work in progress,_ Taylor guessed. The girl waved as Taylor headed towards a comfortable-looking chair.

“Hey kid,” Obsidian opened. “First things first – I was thinking about names that would fit your power. How do you feel about ‘Drone’? You’re more of a Queen, but that says bad things what with King; Drone doesn’t sound evil, matches the power, speaks to the threat posed by your swarm, and will remind people of the sound that swarm makes – which, trust me, will be a _huge_ intimidation factor to villains. Plus I checked, and it’s not taken, not even by any Tinkers past.”

Taylor considered it briefly, and shrugged. “Sounds a bit more like a Tinker than I’d like, but it’s still better than anything I’ve got. It’ll do unless I think of something better, anyway.”

Obsidian smiled. “Well then. Drone, meet Insight; Insight, Drone.”

The other girl raised a hand in greeting and started talking full-speed. “Good to meet you, Drone. You’re the one who fought Lung last night, aren’t you? Bug control? Gotta say, that is _seriously_ impressive. Plus it let me meet Obs here,” (the benicknamed hero grimaced slightly,) “which is really working out very well, so I’ve got to thank you at least twice over. So, what brings you here?” Rather than pause to wait for an answer, she went on talking, “Something you learned. Someone you don’t like, someone in your school? Oh, _wow_ , that’s a lot more feeling than ‘don’t like’ –”

“Insight,” said Obsidian calmly, cutting her off.

“– Right, yes. Sorry. Old habits. Go ahead, Drone.”

With the conversation passed to her, Taylor took a moment to try and figure out how best to articulate her thoughts, gave up, made an incoherent noise of rage, and forced the memory of Sophia as seen in Kheprisight through the link at Obsidian, accompanied by a vague impression, stripped of context that could identify either girl, of how she felt about her.

On receiving it, Obsidian’s eyes widened, but she gave little reaction otherwise. After a moment of thought, she spoke aloud for Insight’s benefit: “The one you picked up on her hatred of is apparently a cape. The energy Khepri saw clinging to her indicates she shifts partway out of normal space, so… Shadow Stalker, probably? Hey, you two can bond over dislike of her.” Taylor cocked her head curiously. “Yeah, Shadow Stalker isn’t any better as a hero than she is as a person; she shot one of Insight’s friends in the stomach with her crossbow, using live ammo rather than the tranquilizer bolts she’s meant to be limited to as a Ward.”

Gesturing wildly, Taylor made another angry noise. “That’s one of the things that’s getting to me! She’s a Ward! A _hero!_ Which explains why the school ignored her no matter what she did – I thought the Protectorate was _helping people_ , not just covering their own asses! Miss Militia seemed nice, but even she let that keep on! They can’t have, have just _not noticed_ that she was a terrible person, can they? And if I joined the Wards, would I be expected to _work with her_ , or, or, would she even get in _trouble_ , or would they just try and shut me up? It’s – it’s all just – _argh!_ ” At some point during her shouting, she realized, she seemed to have stood up so as better to angrily flail around, and collapsed back into her seat.

Obsidian waited a few moments to make sure she was finished, then nodded. “Now I will note, first of all, that it’s not quite as bad as it seems, though I grant that might be difficult to credit. First of all, though Stalker’s a decidedly unpleasant person even around the Wards, they aren’t aware just how bad she gets; they don’t know that she’s using lethal ammo, and they certainly don’t know how she treats you. That’s not very good in itself, admittedly, but it’s a combination of your principal interpreting some things badly and Stalker herself being careful to hide the worst of it from them. The principal keeps quiet because she was _told_ to be understanding of Stalker’s Ward activities cutting into her schoolwork, which she _interpreted_ to mean “sweep any incidents whatsoever under the rug”, helped along by the fear that if Stalker was transferred out, she might lose the money the PRT pays the school. That she has a competent, if unpleasant, lawyer backing her up is just the icing on the cake.”

“Wait,” said Taylor, puzzled. “How do you know all this? I only just found out about Shadow Stalker today myself.”

“Ah. Good question. The short version is, I know a few things – think of it as a kind of Thinker power, maybe, though it isn’t, strictly speaking. Say, I know how some things would go if I didn’t exist; not everything, but enough to make a difference. And I suspect, though I can’t be sure, that things will generally work out as I would expect them to, unless there’s context I’m missing; it’s not a solid rule, per se, more of an intuition or a way of thinking. I can’t explain how I know it – you’ll have to trust me on that – and I only came into a position to do anything about it two days ago. Insight, stop Thinking about it, you’ll give yourself a headache before you get anything useful.”

Indeed, Insight was already starting to display tension in her body language, though her armor’s mask didn’t display her expression. “That’s _bizarre_. I couldn’t use my power on what you were saying _at all_ – it was like running headfirst into a wall. That’s _never_ happened before. How the hell..?”

“Can’t explain that either, sorry. Though you’re right about it never happening – you’re actually one of the more powerful Thinkers out there, even among the ones that see the future, because things like the Endbringers that block precogs are still open to your power.”

“…And you knew that when you came to talk to me,” Insight concluded, accusation clear in her voice.

“True. And I won’t deny it was a factor in why I approached you personally, rather than just dealing with him and letting your group cope as it may. But it wasn’t the _only_ reason; I honestly do think you guys have had a bad time of things, and I intend to help some more people who are in similarly bad situations.”

Looking between them, Taylor asked, “What are you guys talking about? Or is it a secret-identity thing?”

Obsidian glanced at Insight for just long enough to see the latter nod, then explained, “Insight, until quite recently, was a villain going by Tattletale. Not, I should note, by choice; another villain, Coil, recruited her literally at gunpoint, and his power was enough to give her no chances to escape. Her team, the Undersiders, was made of people who got similarly raw deals; I was able to step in and help.”

“Oh,” said Taylor. “Well, that’s… good.”

“Don’t worry,” said Obsidian, “I’ll be doing what I can to keep them from returning to evildoing if it looks like they plan to. And I wouldn’t try it with worse villains, Lung or Kaiser or their ilk; that would be futile.

“Anyway, so Stalker. Now, the Protectorate brought her in as a vigilante, giving her the choice of joining or going to jail – she’d killed more than once, so they certainly couldn’t let her go free. The idea isn’t a bad one, a hero is much better than an imprisoned villain, but the problem is Stalker was categorically _not the right person_ to make that offer to; she had no intention of restraining herself, and is smart enough to not get caught. For what it’s worth, none of the Wards like working with her, and she’s only tolerated with extreme reluctance.

“There’s a few options on how to deal with her. We could kill her, but that’s a bit too evil. If we bring forward the evidence that she’s violating her parole, though, between your testimony – the fact that you have it written down well in advance helps – and Insight’s we should have easily enough to get her investigated, and she’ll end up in jail, with electric restraints to prevent her from using her power to escape. If we handle them right, we can almost certainly get them to lean on – her lawyer – and so the other two members of the Trio should end up on thin ice. Be fun to give her a taste of what it’s like to be kept quiet, right? And if you want we can probably wrangle a transfer out of Winslow to Arcadia, too, come to think of it.

“They would be more inclined to help us if you told them you wanted to join the Wards, but I doubt we’ll strictly need that leverage as long as we play it right, just so long as you don’t try and go villain. And joining the Wards does come with a few downsides. It’s a bureaucracy, so there’s lots of paperwork and rules before getting anything of significance done. There’s a lot of focus on PR, and they’d probably encourage you to lighten your image; even for the heaviest-duty villains they’d frown on using black widows or brown recluses, for example, no matter if they’re immune or not. And I don’t know whether you’d be allowed to keep Khepri; biotinkertech that an unaffiliated agent can affect remotely would be _hideous_ to wrangle. And Wards aren’t, technically, even supposed to be out on the streets, so you would have to wait a few years before you were mostly free to help people.

“I’m not saying you _can’t_ join the Wards, of course; the choice, ultimately, is yours. But in your place _I_ wouldn’t join, and if I may admit to a little selfishness, I would rather have you on my team rather than someone else’s; you’re a major asset and a nice kid, and my team as it stands is looking kind of lonely. Also? If you’re in the Wards I can’t build you bugs to order; on my team, I can and will.” She grinned warmly and spread her arms at the last sentence.

Taylor took several minutes to weigh the options in her mind, asking occasional questions that Obsidian or Insight would answer to help clarify aspects of the situation. In the end, though, it wasn’t a particularly hard decision.

* * *

Allowing my body in Brockton Bay to go dormant, I moved into one waiting on my island. It was an irritating limitation I had found in my power; even when Taylor’s signal had allowed me to count multiple discrete units as part of my body, only one unit above a certain, ill-defined complexity would function at a time, the rest falling into a sort of hibernation. I could control a swarm of fake bugs as large as I liked, though the degree of fine control decreased as I added more, but two human bodies? Nope. It was a bizarre and arbitrary limit my power had imposed, but then I was hardly the first cape to deal with such things; just ask Taylor how she felt about skin mites, after all.

Granted, I was still peripherally aware of the functioning of dormant bodies, but not enough to control two in detail simultaneously. It was enough, though, for the seventh major idea I’d had when thinking about my power: a seed in the middle of the ocean was growing into what would eventually become an island large enough to be liveable. Not being part of any extant country, I was hoping it could be a fallback if, say, Canary’s case proved impossible to deal with legally; even if that didn’t work out, there were probably more situations in which I would regret _not_ having my own island than in which I would regret _having_ it.

Also, it was really, really cool to consider having my own island, especially one that was alive.

I was pretty sure I was going to get a visit from Dragon at some point, but that could wait.

Behind me hovered a spherical drone and a Khepri, the former providing a point of view to project onto the inside of Insight’s mask and the latter, obviously, letting Taylor see what I was doing. As yet I had no way to bring them here quickly, but remote viewing would suffice. In front of me sat a mock pentagram set into the ground itself, flames with no clear source burning at each point. Sure, I was in the process of saving the world, but what good was that if it meant I couldn’t have any fun along the way?

And in the service of fun, I began my overly-dramatic recitation, my body Obsidian once more, my voice echoing across and from the land itself. “Through the Clairvoyant I call you. For Cauldron’s ends, I bid you come. By your name, I summon you: Contessa. Contessa. Contessa!”

A doorway opened, and a woman in a suit stepped out.

Three feet to the left of the entire setup.

“You have no sense of humor _at all_ , do you know that?” I complained, the echo absent now.

“Yes,” agreed Contessa, and frowned. “I cannot see any Path that specifies you in its conditions. You know of Cauldron and of the Clairvoyant, but I do not recognize you. And no record on Earth contains any mention of this island. Explain.”

“All in due time, Contessa. But first we need to talk about a few things. The most important, I think, are David’s power decline, the Endbringers, and the end of the world. Would you like a seat?”

* * *

I stepped out of a Door to find a scene of utter carnage. Of course, given who I was here to deal with, that was no surprise.

Most of the world’s supervillains had been fairly easy to deal with, for given values of “easy”. For those whose physiology had allowed it, a mosquito-like drone had simply injected a few millilitres of the most potent sedative that I could make without outright killing them; they had simply fallen asleep, and would awaken in the Birdcage. Masters and Strangers had, generally speaking, no significant defense against a brain made of fractal crystal and eyes as remote as any camera. The Brutes, Changers, and so forth who would be impossible to catch that way were simply surrounded by a sphere of biomaterial, tagging them as “mine” as much as, say, a pacemaker or an artificial joint would have been, and putting them to sleep had been simple thence. (I had tested that idea first, of course, with Lisa watching, so that she could confirm that I wasn’t interrupting any continuity of consciousness; not that I had objections to killing people, but the idea of replacing them with identical clones afterwards, much less clones that were made of _me_ , was highly uncomfortable.)

Naturally, none of them would actually be going to the Birdcage until I’d looked into their cases to determine whether they were genuinely deserving, or more kids who got dealt a bad hand and forced into villainy.

In the meantime, there was the Slaughterhouse Nine. Seeing the gore strewn about, I lamented having not tackled them first, but a hastily-assembled Thinker conference had concluded that the delay, brief though it was, that taking them down would introduce would, in fact, be long enough to cost significantly more lives, significantly more suffering worldwide than they could take in the time it took to take down everyone else, especially since I had started too late to catch them before or in the middle of their “fun”.

And so I looked about at the remains of those it had been too late to practically save as the Nine descended upon the intruder in their midst. None of them were still alive and sane enough that I could repair them without essentially creating them anew; I put them out of their misery.

Jack Slash was my second target, a monofilament wire extruded from my hand piercing the casing around his brain and fractalling, shredding it into a brainy soup. Mannequin fell almost as easily, though the casing holding his organs was impressively durable. The Siberian I ignored for the moment as she gouged furrows out of my Breaker body, since I was healing the damage almost as quickly as it was inflicted. Bonesaw I enclosed in a sphere to neutralize any plagues, and once my power claimed her I simply erased her from existence; her creations followed suit.

The rest weren’t in the same room, and so I made a beeline for the closest, ignoring such petty concerns as “walls”. Hatchet Face, visible as something akin to a black hole in my othersight and kept carefully away from everyone else to avoid switching their powers off mid-torture, was unable to affect mine, whether because my brain was nowhere nearby or because my power didn’t come from a shard I wasn’t sure. The Siberian winked out mid-strike as a dragonfly drone (what, I liked dragonflies) dispatched in the first moments of the engagement got close enough to Manton to strike. Burnscar fell entirely without incident, having opted to attack rather than flee. Shatterbird tried to destroy my body when she saw it was crystalline, but having anticipated that, I had excluded any silicate crystal whatsoever.

And then there was Crawler.

The brain-liquefying strike I had used to kill the others was useless against him; even assuming I could reach his brain, he had backups, and could regrow them. The next step, then, was to try tagging him into my power, but he didn’t hold still long enough to enclose more than his leg; trying to convert a single point and spread outwards failed when his body simply rejected the affected tissue, and a repeat attempt was predictably unsuccessful.

I could have kept trying, probably would have eventually come up with something that could kill him in one stroke, but it wasn’t worth the time and effort involved. So as he charged me, bellowing gleefully, I simply spoke four words.

“Door to Earth Alcatraz.”

The opening unfolded directly in the path of Crawler’s titanic form, and closed uneventfully after he went through. Crawler would live out the rest of his days on an Earth chosen, with Cauldron’s help, specifically for the purpose of holding those few supervillains who couldn’t practically be taken down even by my power, Butcher and the Ash Beast among them. With the Endbringers removed from the equation, the only threat surpassing even that measure was the Sleeper, and he was reasonably content to remain inactive if he wasn’t disturbed.

While I went around purging the remnants of Bonesaw’s experiments, which were mostly self-contained but there was no sense letting a potential pandemic go unchecked, I reported my success to Taylor and, through her, everyone else. The next order of business was to see what I could do for the Case 53s; Panacea had been able to heal some of them in the past, but their bodies had reverted to type over time. I had hopes that giving them splinters of my power programmed to constantly change to a human-normal form would be able to circumvent that problem.

* * *

Another of my bodies was obliterated by Scion’s golden beam as I, being the most expendable combatant, kept him off-balance while Taylor moved the key players into position for the final strike. The Endbringers, fighting at full power and perfectly coordinated by Taylor through Eidolon, had been able to keep him sufficiently occupied that he didn’t notice a thread as thick as a strand of spider silk drifting down onto him, and I had grown it from there; he hadn’t seemed to realize yet that he was covered in a nigh-invisible mesh of connected threads, and it was about time to end this.

 _Now, Drone!_ I called through Khepri, and felt/saw the Thanda cape’s power take hold, fixing all of the key players relative to Scion’s position. Which was a smart precaution, as it turned out, because as Taylor reached out to take the shot, Scion seemed to panic –

* * *

The entity receives a warning signal from one of the shards arrayed against it, and a programmed defense – what in a younger form of life might be called an instinct – takes hold. Even as its limited lifespan begins to shrink further, the entity looks over the potential futures, to find the simplest method of escaping the threat –

And, for a fraction of a second, hangs insensate as the power returns a nonsense result. In all of the futures the entity can see, there is no realistic danger to its defenses, only a barest few trillion paths where the human attached to the shard strikes by some whim; the entity cannot correlate the paths with the reality it observes, it _cannot see what it should do_ , and only the divining power deactivating to conserve energy brings it back into motion.

In even those most unlikely of universes the human is consistently only in this one universe, and the entity steps sideways and far, emerging on a different, distant Earth, and relaxes – or something close to it – in the knowledge that it should now be safe to ponder this anomaly –

And the Sting strikes, and there is pain.

* * *

Being forcibly pulled through the skin between universes was a disorienting experience, and even several of the capes under Taylor’s control visibly stumbled when they landed; but Flechette’s power of perfect timing moved her to land perfectly balanced, and simply being off-balance wasn’t enough to interrupt Taylor’s multi-tasking. Flechette, who had been holding an improbably thin thread, applied her power to it, and it ran through the line to the net on Scion’s skin; the golden man fell into countless pieces, a restored body forming moments later, but that was okay because the strike served its purpose; for a single, eye-twisting instant, Scion’s true body was visible, the defenses erected around it lain low.

Taylor knew the next step well, and a sphere of trillions of tiny portals opened around me; my human form was abandoned for some nightmarish porcupine, a thread spearing into each portal and emerging, roughly equally distributed, throughout the enormity of Scion’s true body.

This was a difficult trick to figure out and I’d never done anything on a barest fraction of this scale, but the theory was sound, having been tested first on Cauldron’s power vials and then on several universes’ manifestations of the Thinker Entity. The entities were ancient and unbelievably complex and operated on principles incomprehensible to most humans, but they were still ultimately biological, and biology was what my power _did_.

Each of the threads stabbed into Scion’s bulk and began shredding every “cell” they contacted, replacing them before his own healing could do the same, and the effect rippled out; slowly, as Scion hung motionless in the air in the wake of something like a lobotomy, what was _his_ body became _mine_. My power was never meant to operate on this scale, leaving me feeling like butter spread over too much bread, but once enough of his form was claimed the final step was simple. Each of the shards changed slightly, such a very small change for such an enormous outcome, and they rejected one another; Scion went from a single entity to uncountable tiny, unconnected fragments, and they refused to join into a greater whole again.

The body of the golden man dissolving into dust clearly heralded the end of the fight. Scion was no more.


End file.
